Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 26-September-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966)

Any writing teacher will tell you that hackneyed phrases lessen the impact of your work. In the realm of movie criticism, the phrase "feel-good" is so hackneyed it sounds suspicious, like the ooze of an unscrupulous (or made-up) reviewer who describes a colossal dud as "The Feel-Good Surprise of the Year!" But, dammit, I want to use "feel-good" for Norman Jewison's The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. Not only is this movie a riot, it doles out more warm fuzzies than a basketful of kittens in July.

The Cold War inspired dramas, thrillers, and farce, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming epitomizes the latter category. It takes place on a sleepy island off New England where a Soviet submarine runs aground because its bullheaded captain insists on ogling enemy land. Nine sailors, led by the superbly deadpan Alan Arkin, go ashore to find a boat that might serve as a tug (or a push). Stealth is uppermost in their minds since they're terrified of being caught on U.S. soil and killed, tortured, or incarcerated. Everybody's just folks, after all, and each man as vulnerable as another. You begin to feel good already.

Mayhem ensues as the sailors encounter a few inhabitants of the island and news of their arrival spreads in the lightning-fast and inaccurate way typical of a small community. A writer (Carl Reiner) and his wife (Eva Marie Saint) meet the foreigners first and, although frightened, note that they're not the rabid murderers of red-baiting fantasy. In fact, one Russian who speaks a bit of English (John Phillip Law) is such a sweet, cornfed boy that he eventually wins the heart of the couple's babysitter (Andrea Dromm). His comrades don't fare as well when they head into town looking for the marina. As the sheriff (Brian Keith) and his deputy (Jonathan Winters) investigate odd reports (did Soviet parachuters really invade the dusty field known as "the airport?"), a zealous veteran (Paul Ford) organizes a militia of scraggy old fishermen. Ill informed mobs carrying guns are not usually a source of humor, but that's the beauty of an island setting: you can easily accept that it has an idiosyncratic culture, which in this case involves bumbling and posturing without any real violence at its core.

You hope from the start that the polite castaways with their funny accents and saucer eyes will, like Lassie, find their way home. The movie's finale doesn't just grant this wish, it allows the panicked citizens of the island to share it as well. After an unexpected crisis fosters camaraderie at the very moment when Russian-American tension reaches its peak, everyone from the militia geezers to the cranky submarine captain decides his imagined enemies are all right. What unites them is palpable; what separates them is chimerical. It's the satisfaction of a Christmas movie with borscht and barnacles instead of egg nog and tinsel. In other words, it's the feel-good comedy of the Cold War.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.